Is the UN comparable in power to the Supreme Court?

Next month, world governments are to convene at COP15, the UN climate-change summit in Copenhagen to discuss and craft a new protocol aimed at reducing global warming because the Kyoto Protocol is soon expiring. However, diplomats and environmentalists, especially global climate change negotiators are worried that there would be no final agreement between developed and developing countries in regards to the limit on green house gas emissions. There have been many disagreements in regard to the limit of green house emission in different countries obviously, since developing countries believe it’s unfair for them to cut their national emissions when already developed countries like the United States, who were responsible for a large amount of current and past emissions to not yield and cut their emissions by significantly.

Currently, the United States is still in talks in finalizing the debate over the carbon emission cap. Although the House has already approved a bill that would limit the US green house gas emissions, the Senate is still deadlocked and have not yet signed the bill. This consequently causes other developing nations like India and China to wait before handing in their proposal for emission cuts, thus, delaying talks for a full, legal binding treaty for parties to ratify on environmental conditions.

The deadlock and difficulty in different countries to come up with official treaties on greenhouse gas emissions has to do with the UN’s lack of power to command. The UN is in a way like the US Supreme Court, as it has neither “force nor will” to direct the nations in the world to do as they say. They lack both the sword and the purse since they cannot force any nation to follow a set of rules, like abiding by certain environmental laws and cut back on emission since they do not have the wealth, hence incentive, for countries to listen to them, and at the same time, if a country were to walk out on the rules and not abide by them, there will be no repercussion, at least not the UN’s part since they cannot stake out an army against that country and forcibly make sure the country follows the gas emission caps. A total disregard for the UN can be seen in previous talks in Barcelona, where 50 African nations walked out on talks, protesting richer nations for not yielding to a significant drop in greenhouse emissions in the year 2020. In this way, the UN is a lot like the Supreme Court in that the only way the UN would have any power is if all the countries listened to the UN, which clearly isn’t the case currently with so many different country leaders at squabbles with each other over how much gas emissions to limit, all wanting to limit the least amount they possibly can.